Festool Jig Saw Blade 486562 - Glass and Ceramic??

[peter halle]

I have a tiny project coming up that will require mirror to be installed over an electrical receptacle and rather than dealing with the hassle of taking the template mirror to a glass shop I was wondering about drilling and using the Festool Jig saw blade referenced above.

Anyone have experience with it?

Thanks for your help.

Peter

 

[HarveyWildes]

I asked a similar question to a glass guy a while back, and here's what he said.  If it's tempered, any cutting (professional or not) will affect the internal stresses and it could shatter.  He refused to cut tempered glass.  If it's not tempered, you could vibrate the glass enough to break it.

 

[peter halle]

Thanks Harvey.  I sincerely doubt that the mirror involved is tempered.  I just ordered a blade and will post after my attempt on some scrap mirror I have here.

Peter

 

[Cheese]

Ya, the good news is that any mirror I've dealt with has not been tempered. Maybe it's just the giant commercial variety that is. I'd be very interested in hearing how that 486562 blade works on glass as I've used that style blade before on cast iron.

 

[rst]

I've been in the commercial glass business 38 years.  Drill your four corners with a carbide glass carefully, the home centers usually have ceramic drills with water dams.  After making the corner hole, score the lines between with a new cutter after brushing kerosene on the cut lines...the kerosene keeps the cut from refreezing shut.  If you cut without the lube you will hear the glass trying to refuse and see little shards popping off the cut. Gently tap the cut lines from behind the cut (why the break-in on movies and tv are nonsense), you can see the cut extending through the glass.  Don't try to cut all four sides and then try to remove the scrap in one piece, the glass will not break square to the cut and will bind when you try to remove. Make diagonal cuts to the holes and remove in pieces.  Practice alot... it goes sideways even for us.  Good luck!

 

[RKA]

Be careful Peter.  The vibrations introduced by a jigsaw would scare me silly when working with glass.  It wouldn't be the tool of choice for me, I would rather use a drill bit and glass cutter (lots of videos on making cuts outs for electrical boxes).  But if you proceed, suit up and keep pup in another room!

 

[LDBecker]

I've been cutting a bit of glass tile for my kitchen backsplash using a 10" wet saw and a glass blade - it works ok, but a fair percentage of the cuts results in one side or the other splitting in odd directions, or at least chipping out at an edge. Frustrating, but doable, and I'm getting better at it.

Mirrors can be a bit thin, though, and more brittle. These tiles are fairly thick. I find it helps to have a piece of glass tile underneath the tile I'm cutting to act as a support on both sides of the cut for the whole length of the cut. This might be pretty unwieldy on a large mirror, though. As someone said, the vibrations from the jigsaw would likely shatter the mirror...

 

[peter halle]

Thanks Guys for the guidance.  This is nothing more than the mirror in the back of a surface mounted medicine cabinet.  Yes the mirror is removable.  I have watched several videos about doing this with a glass cutter and drill.  I will rig up a water dam around the corner holes and I will also cut a center hole.  Probably will have a wood backer behind AND I will keep the pups away and gear up safety-wise.  I will experiment on the mirror tiles from Ikea - circa 1994  [eek] [eek] that I took down around Thanksgiving when I painted the living room.

I did contact Festool technical support this morning and left a message.  Eric called me back within 30 minutes ( [thumbs up] ) and came back with recommendations for the blade and usage, but they haven't had any usage or comments from users about cutting glass, so I guess I am going to be an experiment.  [member=57769]TylerC[/member] , please make sure you thank Eric for me.  Cool guy!

Peter